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If you are an entrepreneur and hired other people to work for you, you need to know what turnover is, in order to prevent it from becoming a problem for your business.
Employee turnover has become one of the greatest challenges for entrepreneurs, especially in jobs related to technology.
Both skilled labor shortage, as well as job offers for professionals well-known in the market, make turnover a frequent occurrence in the corporate environment. Although common, this uncertainty is detrimental for the company.
Future job candidates might be concerned about being part of the team. After all, the impression they might have is that they won’t be staying for long on the staff.
The company, on the other hand, might also become known for not retaining employees for long, which may result in job candidates that don’t stay at the same job for long, which ends up perpetuating this cycle.
In addition, a high turnover rate requires a lot more training and actions to bring the employee and the company’s philosophy closer together.
Therefore, with the purpose of reducing turnover and helping to improve your company’s productivity, we’ll show you 7 practical tips you can start applying right now:
What is Turnover?
Turnover is a term that is widely used in companies nowadays, as it refers to the organization’s employee turnover rate.
In many cases, a high turnover rate may be among the factors that directly affect the quality and productivity of a given company.
This has always been an important issue for entrepreneurs because relying on qualified labor for many years, for example, means having employees who are more committed and who know your business well.
And trust me, having people who have been working for you for a long time, directly affects your ability to attract new professionals.
A company can be seen as a good working environment if your employees can clearly see growth opportunities and if they can attest, through other employees’ who work there, the possibility of having a career with greater longevity.
This is why knowing how to minimize turnover impact is vital for a business’ health, regardless of your business segment.
Why you need to reduce turnover
Every entrepreneur knows how difficult it is to attract, retain and train good employees.
They also know that this complex equation is essential for your business’ success, since training a good team requires time and resources.
A high turnover rate results in another major problem: the extreme difficulty in delegating more specific tasks, which requires greater knowledge about your company’s internal processes.
With high turnover, you waste a lot of time teaching new employees, thus creating an endless training cycle.
Reducing turnover is also essential due to a matter of market strategy.
After all, if the company is stigmatized by high turnover, it will influence the brand negatively and it could lead to the company being perceived as a stepping-stone to other companies.
7 tips to reduce turnover
Now that you’ve understood what turnover is, we’ll show you 7 effective tips to help entrepreneurs and those responsible for hiring employees to reduce employee turnover in the corporate environment.
Of course, each company operates differently; therefore, you should know that these tips can and should be adjusted to better suit your business.
However, whatever your area of activity is, certain guidelines are essential to improve communication and internal processes in companies in general.
With that in mind, check out the tips:
1. Provide constant feedback
An efficient path to reducing turnover is the good old dialog. This means establishing frequent chats in which employees can receive clear and precise feedback on what they’re doing right and what needs to be improved.
Closely following the professional development of those who work for you creates a productive bond of mutual growth, since it shows your employees that you care about their path in your company.
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2. Ask for feedback
Learning how to listen to your team is key to establishing an effective communication channel, after all, communication should be a two-way street.
Listening carefully to what employees think enables you to evaluate new points of view and to assess which processes need to be improved.
In addition, employees who have an active voice in the professional environment feel appreciated and important. They feel like they play a significant role in the company and therefore, business results are likely to be better.
3. Conduct atmosphere surveys
Having too many appointments and being in charge of too many tasks can often make the entrepreneur become isolated and not notice the climate within their own organization.
As a result, employee dissatisfaction is probably not being seen either.
This distancing collaborates significantly to a high turnover rate in the company, since the existing problems don’t reach the person in charge of the organization.
The solution to this problem lies in the use of mechanisms that allow you to measure how the working environment is perceived, with surveys, anonymous suggestions boxes and other methods where people can tell you about how it feels to work at your company.
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It’s very important to follow-up and closely monitor what employees think and say about the company, and similarly, make corrections quickly.
But be careful not to turn this action into surveillance, because this would discourage people from telling you how they feel.
What you need to do here is a constant evaluation of the working environment itself, and not of employees.
4. Talk to the leaders
Within the workplace, it is natural for leaders to emerge in certain areas, whether they are established hierarchically or based on the personality of certain employees.
These leaders act as catalysts of the company’s atmosphere. Therefore, talking to these representatives facilitates the understanding of your business’ overall view in its most diverse sectors.
This close relationship also allows the acknowledgment of these professionals and the consolidation of team spirit, essential for the reduction of turnover.
5. Offer adequate pay
Although it seems obvious, one of the major factors responsible for affecting the turnover rate in companies is still related to salaries. After all, all employees take their salary, benefits and labor rights into consideration when deciding whether to changes jobs or not.
In order to offer suitable remuneration, it’s essential that you pay attention to the market and its constant variations.
Offering a clear career plan and indicating growth opportunities also helps reduce turnover in the corporate environment.
6. Acknowledge good work
Employee recognition is still one of the elements that motivate employees and teams the most.
In addition to financial rewards and having a nice work environment, recognizing good work is key.
There are various forms of acknowledging good practices, such as extra benefits, salary raise, promotions, collective recognition programs, extra days off, etc.
This recognition should be encouraged in a healthy manner in order to foster healthy competition among employees, always aiming at improving collective results.
7. Contribute to personal development
So far, you’ve seen a few simple tips that can prevent turnover from compromising your company’s results.
But, in addition to the professional aspect, it’s important to think about your employees’ personal development, in other words, viewing employees not only as those who work in order for your business to be successful but also as human beings.
Demonstrating that you are interested in their well-being as well as their families’, also helps to build a more positive working environment.
Similarly, promoting sports and leisure activities also contributes to improving employee quality of life and consequently adds benefits to the work environment.
Major corporations have already noticed the benefits of such dynamics that in certain cases truly result in changes to the physical configuration of their companies.
It is increasingly common to find break rooms and games in the workplace, training programs and courses unrelated to the company’s area of operation, in addition to a series of other dynamics that improve the environment.
Of course that, as we’ve told you, this depends on your company’s structure and on how you can adapt these activities to improve the working environment for those who work for you.
Remember that no one knows your business better than you do.
The truth is that the answer to reducing turnover once and for all is linked to analyzing your work environment and using creative solutions in order to make your company increasingly interesting for employees, whether for those who have been hired already or those who will be a part of your team in the future.
You should also keep in mind that providing and encouraging the development of the members of your team is, without doubt, a way to stand out.
If you liked these tips and wish to learn more about how to help the personal development of your employees, we advise you to read this post about 6 training and people development techniques.
